I've been tough on crime: now we have to nip it in the bud

About 15 years ago, I more or less made my name on changing Labour's traditional stance on law and order. I sought to get away from what I regarded as an unnecessary polarity: the Right would argue for tougher penalties; the Left for tackling social conditions. The choice was false. The reality was: you need both, a combination of personal and social responsibility.

Over these 10 years of government, crime has fallen. This is in fact the first post-war government to buck the rising trend. There has been a huge investment in regeneration, schools, youth facilities. The prison population has risen by more than 20,000. Sentences have got longer.

But for many people, it simply doesn't feel like that. This is because our feelings of safety or security can't be measured by statistics alone. If there is an air of intimidation in a community or discourtesy in the way people are treated, then that creates a feeling of fear, discomfort, unease.

Fifteen years ago I recognised this happening and recognised, too, that it couldn't just be ascribed to lack of jobs or poverty. There was something deeper going on, to do with society changing, an absence of mutual respect and a failure to take responsibility for the way we behave to each other.

In government, this became known as the "Respect" agenda. We introduced the first anti-social behaviour laws, much criticised, but also undoubtedly much used.

However, there is one big difference between what I think now and what I thought 15 years ago. Then I analysed this issue as a breakdown in society. The "tough on the causes of crime" bit was all about social investment. I regarded this an issue about the nature of society as a whole, curable by Sure Start and the New Deal on jobs, better and improved schooling and so on. The rising tide would lift all ships, including those families in a hopeless and often helpless situation, bringing up feckless and irresponsible children.

I was reminded of this by reading David Cameron's recent speech on "Civility". Though coming at this from a different perspective - wanting to show how society, and not the state, was the answer to disrespect - he had a very similar analysis to mine of 15 years ago. He argued that there was a breakdown in society, a "culture that was becoming decivilised". He went on to say: "There are two ways you can try to make those kids behave better.

You can put a policeman on every bus, an Asbo on every teenager and a parenting order on every parent. Costly, bureaucratic, short-term, superficial and in the end, counter-productive - because it takes responsibility away from people and puts it in the hands of the state. Alternatively, you can build a society where those kids know how to behave in public, because that's how they've been brought up and that's what society expects."

He, too, sees this, as I did in 1997, about society as a whole. However, after 10 years of experience immersing myself in this issue, I no longer agree either with the Blair of 1992 or the Cameron of 2007 in one very central part of the analysis. I don't believe this is an issue to do with society as a whole.

Obviously it impacts on society as a whole. But it is not part of a general breakdown in society, a tearing of our social fabric or a descent into a "decivilised" culture.

Investment in the public realm has helped a transformation in city centres and improvements in public services, but I no longer think that social investment - essential though it is - is the complete solution.

I realised this most strongly when I was in Moss Side in Manchester a few months ago. Moss Side was a byword for guns and gangs and deprivation. Ten years ago, its school results were terrible; its housing poor; unemployment was high.

Ten years on, Moss Side has radically improved in schools, housing, employment. Its residents want to live there. All those I spoke to acknowledged the progress. But a small minority of "out of control" children and families still caused a huge problem, leeching into drugs and gangs. In short, the rising tide had not lifted all ships.

The problem with David Cameron's words is the same. There is no earthly need to "give every teenager an Asbo" or "every parent a parenting order" because not every teenager or parent deserves one. In fact, the vast majority don't, even in the toughest neighbourhoods. But a tiny minority do.

In other words, what we both identified as a generalised breakdown is no such thing. The overwhelming proportion of young people I meet today are law-abiding, respectful and caring - in many ways much more so than the generation of which I was part in the 1970s. Most parents find it a real struggle today to bring up children. But most parents manage. Most are proud of their children. Most children respect their parents.

The reality is that we are dealing with a very small number of highly dysfunctional families and children whose defining characteristic is that they do not represent society as a whole. They are the exception, not the rule. They do not respond to more investment. They do not conform to social norms.

A couple of days ago, there was a lot of publicity about a 10-year-old given an Asbo, with his father given a parenting order. Of course it's shocking that a 10-year-old was causing such mayhem. But the answer, I'm afraid, is neither to give his father more benefit or for society to explain why such behaviour is wrong.

And go and ask the community if they would prefer the Asbo not to exist.

What I have learnt over these 10 years is that the original analysis I had was incomplete and therefore misguided, ie, guiding us to the wrong policy conclusion, not in the sense that investment in poorer neighbourhoods and regeneration was wrong - it has been absolutely right - but in the sense that it will not deal with this small and unrepresentative minority.

Likewise, when David Cameron argues that ASB laws are "counter-productive" because we all have to take responsibility, that is also misguided. Repealing ASB laws is the last thing we need. And it's not the state that is using them. It is local communities; and, where used, they make a real difference.

The true point is that they are not enough. I now think that the proper answer is to add to the ASB laws measures that target failing and dysfunctional families early, and place those families within a proper, structured, disciplined framework of help and insistence on proper behaviour.

I know this is difficult and controversial, because it involves intervening before the child is committing criminal offences, at least serious ones, and when the families have not yet become a menace. But talk to any teacher in a primary school, social worker or local police officer and they can identify those families easily.

Instead of years with social services trying and failing to persuade them to change, those families, usually dependent on benefit and often in social housing, need to be made to change. Visit the Dundee Family Project for an idea about how it can be done.

It is very tough. It is intrusive. Naturally, people will complain about the "nanny state", but, for some of these families and their children, a nanny state is what they need - for their sake as much as for ours.

Forget the general sociology. Concentrate on the facts. The right analysis will bring a better answer.